So, it’s another Saturday morning of awe-inspiring blogging written from my front porch here in good ol’ Chesapeake, Virginia. I’m feeling very optimistic this morning…got a good nights sleep, am eyeing the house work I have to get done, and I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as I thought, of course I am hoping to start tackling the den which is piled up with stuff, but between this weekend and next Sunday I’m hoping to have a futon and end table in there to make a makeshift guest room for my mom while she comes to visit for a week, should be an interesting week.

I live in an older neighborhood, not a ran down neighborhood and not one of those revived neighborhoods, but an established neighborhood… and as I set on my porch stoop and look out there is one house that just pokes out, you just can’t help but notice…because it’s so damn perfect…so perfect in fact, it’s dull. Two medium sized trees in the front yard, 3 little bushes in front of the house, each the same size as the next, and practically exactly the same shape, the yard which is perfectly manicured and completely green, and I mean green, green, like your yard is in the spring for those few precious perfect weeks when it’s just naturally growing well, and green. The white trim & stair case railing is WHITE, not grayish or was white and has a little dirt on it, it’s white, perfectly white…the brick is the color that only new brick can be…the house was built 4 years ago, and it looks as though it were just finished yesterday…and in side, is Mr. and Mrs. Perfect along with baby Perfect. I know, I know, no one is perfect…but you just have to see them to really believe it…he’s a military guy, yet, is always home in time for dinner, and he’s never on deployment…hmm…I’m still wondering how he manages that…she, is now a stay at home mom, so he’s apparently doing pretty well. She gets up early and takes the baby stroller and goes for a walk, and always looks nice and neatly dressed, not annoyingly over dressed, but in normal clothes, yet they look perfect on her… He always looks nice in khaki shorts and either polo shirts or button down shirts that always look fresh from the dry cleaners, yet I never see them bring in dry cleaning…Mrs. Perfect, no doubt. They have a family dinner every night and then go for a walk around the neighborhood taking the baby along and chatting about their perfect day…they wave at all the neighbors “Oh, aren’t they just the perfect little family.” I hear as I drive by on my home from work, and think how easy it’d be to have dinner on the table at 5 if I wasn’t working, at all…but less 45 hours a week. ..she doesn’t seem to shop a whole lot, but every Saturday when she goes to the grocery store, either he goes along or the moment she pulls up in the drive way he rushes out to grab all the groceries…they almost never really smile, yet always give off that vibe of happiness…and they never brag about being happy, even though the vibe is so strong you can smell it…and he wears sandals…and doesn’t even have creepy man feet…strange actually…he could almost be a foot model…and that means something coming from me…feet are creepy, but ecspecially man feel.

The odd thing is, part of me really likes Mr. and Mrs. Perfect…they are the kind of people you just want to be friends with so you can in someway be closer to perfection…and then the other part of you, the evil part, wants to be friends with them so you can see inside their house and see if they are really as perfect as they seem….I’m sure they must fight sometimes, but, I never see it…never a hint of it…no one has ever stormed out of the house mad, they never seem annoyed when you say hello, or as you randomly sit on the porch unnoticed…and watch their every move…wondering…can they really be so perfect, yet the proof is there…but obviously I don’t have all the facts…

Suddenly, the other day, as I was watching the Perfect baby #1 (apparently #2 is on the way, according to a friend of the Old Hag’s) take some of his first steps across the yard trying to come see our puppy…and trying to make cute like whoofing sounds…They may be perfect, but my god their life is dull…there is no passion coming from over there across the street…My flower beds aren’t as perfectly manicured as theirs…my plants are each growing in their own unique way, and I let them…as long as they stay confined to the flower bed (which at the moment isn’t a problem)…our front porch has some dirt on it…but ever few weeks we sweep it off and make sure there are no dead leaves or sticks on it…about 2 times a year J pressure washes it, just for good measure…our lawn has a few bald spots in it, and one of my solar lights leans a little to the left (or right depending on what side of the porch you are looking from) J and I fight sometimes and one of us will storm out and going else where for our customary cool down sessions…our cars aren’t new, in fact, our newest one is a 98 Ford Taurus which is getting ready to break down every day….our garden hose is almost NEVER put up the way it should be…and out chair cushions pretty much have found a home draped over the porch banister, so when it rains on them, they are already hung up to dry…We’re not perfect by a long shot, but you know, I wouldn’t trade it for Mr. and Mrs. Perfect…I’d like to keep a few fireworks in my life…

Editor’s Note: The friday the 13th evils have been corrupting my wireless connection, so my Friday & Saturday post were not actually posted until sunday…sorry for the delays….without further ado, here’s your post-

The whole porn thing always elicits lots of comments & emails…and some of them (a lot of them) advised me not to forgive J…but here’s the deal, I don’t have another good option. I love him, and really he hasn’t given me a reason to believe that he’s not telling the truth, he’s never really hide anything from me before…well, maybe the marijuana thing, but really I’m not sure he really hide that, I think I just kept trying to block it out…but when it comes to the porn thing…I have no reason to believe it wasn’t just an isolated incident…he’s the first guy I’ve ever dated whom did not have porn in accessible place…he didn’t have internet, until I moved in, and I have never ever found so much as a play boy in his house…every other guy I’ve been with I could find porn in their possession in the first week of dating them…so, I really have no reason to not believe him…and the whole sex thing…as much as it pisses me off that it’s been over a month since we’ve slept together, and least he talked to me…and explained he’s just stressed out over the whole money situation and hasn’t really been himself…pretty valid I guess…I actually got asked at work today why he’d been so moody lately…and he has been, so I’m inclined to believe him…maybe I’m stupid, maybe I’m just looking to get my heart broke again, but…I don’t think so in this case…every other relationship I have known in my heart that it wasn’t meant to be (let me tell you, 6 hours alone in a car, you’d be amazed how much you learn about yourself)…I’ve never felt like J and I didn’t belong together, I’ve never felt like this wasn’t suppose to be…I get mad and pissed sometimes…and I’ve noticed a lot of when I bring J up is when I’m upset about something, so he’s really probably not getting a very fair representation, which I’m going to have to work on…you guys should get to know how wonderful he is…I shall work on that in the future.

It’s been almost a week since I’ve written a “real” blog entry. It’s been a very tiring week…I’ll start you up at this past Friday. A friend of my mom’s organizes a fishing tournament every year in honor of her deceased brother…they hold it at Claytor lake, which is about 30-45 minutes from Blacksburg…she offered to pay me the $200 dollars for gas, plus an extra 50 if I would come up and help. She needed me to be at her house at 5:45 Saturday morning to go set up and handle the registration for the tournament. So, that meant I had to drive up to Roanoke Friday night after work…I didn’t get out of Virginia Beach until 7:45 Friday night and didn’t make it to Roanoke until 1 in the morning. My mom called me when I was about 2 ½ hours outside of Virginia Beach, to let me know that they didn’t need me for registration that they just needed me to handle picking up the food for the picnic afterward, and also the organizers mother….I didn’t have be at the lake until 2, to have everything ready at 4…I could have driven up Saturday morning, damn it! But I was already half way there, so I kept trucking…

Saturday I got the lake thing handled…nothing really exciting there…some good photos from the car show which I’ll post at a later date, when J helps me label them with the right year, make and model. So, we’re getting ready to leave the lake and I noticed a dent in the right passenger bumper of J’s beloved truck…not good…I could remember if it had been there before or night…he’d messed up his bumper about 6 months ago, but I could remember of this dent was from that…so I get back to Roanoke (where my mom now lives) at about 7:30 or 8 that night, go take a shower (it was a hot, sweaty day, I felt disgusting) and spent Saturday evening just hanging out with my mom and grandmother and went to bed early…When J called, I didn’t mention the dent, I was tired and exhausted, and figured it could wait until tomorrow.

Sunday I got up and went to Hampton Inn and spent some time hanging out with my mom & grandmother and stole some breakfast while they worked (they are breakfast attendants there on weekends) and drank LOTS of coffee…so I left there about 11:30, went and filled up the gas tank and ran by Barnes & Noble for a book on CD and left town about 12:20, 12:30…and when I spoke to J to let him know I was headed back home, I asked if by any chance there was a dent on his truck when he gave it to me…he confirmed that there was a dent on the passenger right front, near the bumper…Thank god!! So very relived by that…then he proceeded to tell me that even if I had dented his truck it was no big deal, it’s just a truck…ha, ha…I picked that I didn’t believe him, that he loved his vehicles more than he did people…little did I know, this was a foreshadowing for something that would happen that evening…I made it all the way from Virginia Beach to Claytor Lake, and from Claytor Lake back to Chesapeake with no problems…I was even half asleep for most of it…so I’m coming down our street and see J come up the other way on the street , and he pulls in the drive way…I go to pull in after him…and obviously didn’t judge the distance from the neighbors fence quite well enough, so I scrap the bumper of the truck along the edge of the fence…all while he’s watching…so much for a warm welcome home…he’s furious…I apologize, tell him I didn’t mean to, and I’d pay to get the bumper fixed… “That’s not the point, why’d you hit the fence.”…So that just made me mad…like I intentionally meant to hit the fence? What could possibly be more fun than pissing off your boyfriend, and the neighbor because you hit her fence with his truck?? Eventually, he came back and apologized for yelling…blamed it on the heat (which could be likely, it was 102 out)…

So, very long weekend…very very long…and later that evening I made another fun discovery…I set down to the computer and start to type www.wordpress.com I get through the www.wo and up pops www.womansexy.com, now, anyone who reads my blog, knows…I have a very bad past with men and online pornography…so, I think, maybe it just accidently popped up while he was on the computer this weekend, so I check history…and what do I find?? Several more fun sites…including one about teenagers with big boobs…just what I needed…so of course, that starts a fun fight…I spent 3 years battling with my ex over pornography, and the moment I saw those sites on my computer, that knot built up in my stomach and everything from the past came rushing in, I felt like a 20 year old battling to save her marriage, again….it hurt so much. I just can’t even put it into words. J apologized, told me how it didn’t mean anything…he just looked at the front pages of a few sites, just curious as to what all the hype was about….he didn’t mean to hurt me, how he loved me and didn’t want anyone but me…of course, we haven’t had sex in over month…and I’m gone less than 24 hours and he’s looking at porn online…I’m a little more than upset…I go to bed, he sleeps on the couch…I don’t think either of us got any sleep.

Monday, we barely spoke at work…we got home Monday and I cam to the conclusion that I can’t hold against him what my ex did. No matter how much it hurt…J hasn’t really given me a reason to believe he really looks at porn…he’s not technologically savvy enough to hide it from me, and it was only about 4 or 5 sites, and he was true to his word, he had just looked at the front pages, and hadn’t gone any further…I either had to forgive him, or ended over something that stupid…I can’t hold on to that horrible fear and not be willing to forgive…so, I’m making an effort to deal with it…he said something that kind of stuck with me Monday night, he said “Sometimes you are as hard as a rock and then other times you’re curled up in the corner crying and your as fragile as a shell and I have to handle you so gently.” And it’s true…There are days and moments that I am invincible…nothing bothers me, I can tackle anything…and other times, I feel like I’m not worthy to walk on this earth, my less be loved, wanted, or cared about…It’s hard, because I use to be so strong when it came to relationships…my ex-husband tore me apart, and broke my spirit…I’m trying to build it back…but it’s a lot dang harder than it looks…

So, I’ve “meet” so many wonderful people through this blog, I wanted to open up my blog to some more discussion type entries (and I had a really long weekend, and am very tired and not in the mood to write a long blog entry tonight)…so here is my important question…

If your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other were going to cheat, would it be worse if they cheated with your absolute best friend or your absolute worst enemy?

I, once, had a blog…before this one…but I’ve just recently deleted it…but there was a few post that I’m reusing here…this actually was only written a week or so before I started this blog…and it was in my opinion a very good blog…so I’m sharing it here…here ya go:

Okay, so, yeah, blogging is kind of a hard thing for me to do. You see, by nature, I’m a very private person, so the whole idea of writing down my inner most thoughts and then posting them on the internet for the whole world to see, while, it’s frightening, to say the least. I’ve pretty much convinced myself to approach the whole thing as just a journal for me, and try to ignore that whole Blog Stat where it says how many people are reading this…because the bigger that number is, the scarier it is…especially because there are a lot of things in my life that I’m ashamed of, very, very ashamed of.

My divorce, I felt like a complete failure because I should have been able to do something to make my marriage work. (Did I mention I’m a little bit of a control freak?) Well, turns out, there was absolutely nothing I could do to make my marriage work. If there is one thing I learned, it’s that to make a relationship work BOTH people have to be 100 % committed, not 95%, I’m talking 100%…nothing else should come before your spouse, then your marriage will work. However, if one of the people aren’t completely committed, it’ll never work. I was 100% committed. I changed my entire life trying to become someone I’m not. I thought that if I put in enough effort, that he’d have to love me, and therefore, we’d make it work….turns out, I didn’t love him, I loved what I thought he was, what I thought he could be…turns out, I was 100% wrong about that…He has some serious serious issues he needs to work out. And no matter how hard I tried, you can’t make some one deal with an addiction if they don’t want to. Now, a lot of divorcees, I know, say how they still have fond feelings for their exes. Yep, not me, not at all. It took me a while, but I realized that I never really loved him, so, no feelings there. I’m not mad anymore, he lead me on, he made me believe he was someone he wasn’t and he wanted me to be something I couldn’t be. I’ve moved on, and I’m ready to close that door in my life…and would be very very happy if people would stop asking me about it.

Now, my current love life, is a 180 from my past. J, is the exact polar opposite of my ex. My ex, use to only care about how things would effect him, it didn’t matter if someone else was happy, he only wanted things that made him happy. Even if he did something they you might think he did to make you happy, really he only did it so you’d say how great he was, he was in it for the praise, not for my happiness. Well, J, goes out of his way to make me happy….he gets up in the middle of the night to get me water, because he knows I’ll wake up and want a drink, he remembers to get not only diet coke at the grocery store, but also the lemon to go with it, he makes the effort to get along with my family, even when he doesn’t really understand them, and because of that, my family adores him, and are so happy that I’m with him…and he’s so funny, he makes me laugh all the time, even when I don’t want to…I get mad at him and he’ll say something and make me smile, and I can’t happy but fall in love with him all over again, and then, well, how can you be mad at a guy like that?? Every moment with him is filled with fun, and love….even when I’m having a bad day at work, he’ll walk up and wrap his arms around m and kiss my forehead, and life is so much better, just from that few little seconds to let me know he loves me….and he’s learned to cook vegetarian stuff, just for me…and doesn’t harass me about not eating meat…he doesn’t make a big deal out of it, it’s just part of our day to day life, he eats meat, I don’t…And yeah, I get asked a lot about that whole 18 year age difference thing, but honestly, it’s not a big deal. I use to think it would be, in fact, I was kind of scared when we first started dating, but turns out, it really doesn’t effect us that much…for one, we’re both pretty much in the same point in our life…and even when things come up, like me wanting to go to New York for the CIA, he’s willing to move…I’ve never had someone say they’d do that for me, I’ve always been the one sacrificing, I’ve never had someone sacrifice for me….and yeah, if we have kids it may make it a little harder, considering he’ll be like, 60 when they graduate high school, but wouldn’t be the first time that’s ever happened, and you know, I’ve always imagined I would have kids, but, I’ve had 3 miscarriages, so the reality of it, is I might not ever be able to have children, but with J, even if I don’t I know we’ll be happy together, I don’t have to have the marriage or the kids to be happy, I have him, and that’s what makes me happy…and speaking of that, I’ve always had a problem with jealous…I was always scared that the man in my life would want someone other than me (of course, they being told that a man wanted a 15 year old over me, could have influenced that)…but with J, I’ve never had that problem…even when he talks with 10 or 15 women a day, and they all tell me how great he is, and not all of them know he’s taken, but, I know that I’m the one he wants, there is no doubt in my mind….and that is the greatest feeling on earth, is knowing that I’m finally on the same page with someone…okay, so I see this has gone on for a page and a half, so I’m getting off of here…see ya’ll tomorrow

I’m not a HUGE Starbucks fan. I think their drinks are good, yet highly overpriced…however, sometimes on a long stressful day, I’ll treat my self to a good Mocha or Caramel Macchiato…and for anyone who’s ever drank a starbucks hot drink, they know that on the back of the cup is something called “The Way I See It” and basically it’s a quote from someone, whether famous or not…and you know, the sentiments expressed there can really get you to thinking…at least I know it does me, and so I’m starting this new blog section, to where I’ll share not on the sentiments I found on the back of my coffee cup, but also my view on it…so, here’s the first one:

The Way I See It #208
“I wish couples who desperately take every means to conceive a child would realize that adoption is a wonderful alternative. A child who becomes your child through adoption completes a family. Just as when you commit to your spouse or partner there are no biological ties, yet a family was formed. This child enters a family the same way! It is not blood and flesh that form a family, but the heart.”— Michele JohnsonStarbucks customer from Wamego, Kansas.

Blood relatives does not always equate true family. My father for example, I would not include in my family. 99% of my childhood he was not there for…I am his flesh and blood, yet he didn’t have time. He didn’t have the heart to be a family, so therefore, I’d never consider him part of my family…Giving birth does not make you a family.

My older brother is actually my half-brother/cousin. (Sounds kind of West Virginiaish, huh?) His father is my father’s brother. I spent the majority of my childhood never knowing that…I was probably 14 or 15 before I found out…I don’t even remember how it came about, but, I know my mom told me, and we were in the kitchen, but other than that I don’t really recall how it happened, what I do remember is the way it felt….like half my heart was being ripped out…like…my life was a lie…and what else were people hiding…turns out, they only reason I didn’t know, was because my mother & grandmother loved me enough to not want me to have to deal with it, before I was ready…they didn’t want to split us a part as a family…part of me wishes they would have told me sooner, but part of me is very glad they didn’t…our childhood was rough enough, but at least we knew we had each other…I was scared things would change after I knew the truth…turns out, nothing changed…we still fought…he still held me down and tickled me so much that I almost peed my pets…he still got mad when I tried to tag along after his friends…The thing is, it doesn’t matter that he’s not biologically my 100% brother, because he is my brother. We’re not as close as I wish we were, but, we’ve never been real close…but I know he’s only a phone call a way if I need anything…and I know we’ll never really understand each other, and I may never like his girlfriend…but…you know, that’s what it’s like to be a little sister…whether or not it’s by blood or not, it really is in the heart that a family is formed.

So I was watching Women’s Murder Club tonight. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, the main character is Lindsey, a police detective, who has been haunted by a serial killer she’s never been able to catch. She calls him the kiss-me-not killer…she became so obsessed with it she ended up divorced…and her love life has pretty much spiraled down hill, because she’s too busy being a cop…until this guy Pete comes around…she’s at the airport (generic place for love connections/revelations)…and she tells him that she hasn’t known how to let herself be happy….but she was ready to try…she was ready to let herself be happy.

I think we all have kiss-me-not killers in our lives…no matter how big or small, if just regret over something you did yesterday or a mistake you made 10 years ago…you learn from them, but you have to let go…you have to let go to move on….which is a lot easier said than done….but the reason I brought this up, is ironically…this evening, right before the show came on and J was headed to bed, I was thinking how great my life is going…J and I are madly in love and getting along great, work…well, is work, but at least it’s decent paying and pretty stable…I’m getting closer to my family, especially my little brother…and, I was bracing for something bad to happen…”bad things always happen when things are going great…something bad is going to mess this all up”…andthat’s the attitude I’ve always had, don’t get too comfortable because something is going to come mess it up…maybe that something is me…maybe that attitude is what’s ruining stuff, maybe it’s because I can’t let myself be happy…I want to, I want to be happy, and I’m ready to let me be happy.